[maxer]

i was asked to be a technical reviewer on a book with apress, i felt really good about reviewing and agreed.

When i received the first few chapters i realized the book would have to be re-written. The English was bad and the code was mediocre.

Since it wasn't a paid gig i felt insulted with the experience, the book would require days if not weeks of work to complete rather than a few hours which i had thought.

[swaroop]

Same exact experience here but with a different publisher - I also agreed to be a technical reviewer which I ended up regretting after reading the prose and code.

[anghyflawn]

Not to be snarky, but that's what reviewers do: help with good stuff, reject bad stuff. Academia works the same way. Even if you think it's a racket, this is far from unique to Apress.

[mikeash]

I don't think that's the case. The purpose of a technical reviewer is to do fact checking on the technical aspects of the writing. If the writing itself is bad, it never should have gotten that far.